The interns have gone five months without salaries since last December, shedding light on the plight of fresh doctors who offer primary care in government health facilities.

Dr Kaugiria said that the majority of those affected in the current mix-up are doctor interns that bank with KCB and Co-operative banks.

Bank statements seen by the Business Daily show that some medical interns’ accounts were either grossly overpaid or underpaid, as per the standard salary set for Job group L.

The standard net pay for interns is Sh90,000.

One pay slip of a medical intern who banks with KCB, for instance, showed Sh184,641 was credited as salary from the ministry on May 11, only for his account to be debited the following day leaving him with a negative balance of (Sh571,942).

Another account received Sh284,678 from the Ministry on May 11, but the amount was fully reversed the following day.

“I got Sh284,678 then they removed Sh80,000 first then another Sh284,000 was deducted. They added another Sh80,000 after the deductions – it is confusing since we do not get pay slips thus have no proof of pay.”

According to the Health principal secretary, Julius Korir, the process of designing personal numbers for payslips takes a while and they did not want “interns to suffer before they got paid”.